


Catalysis

by PunJedi



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, Light Angst, M/M, One Shot, Possession, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), arguments as a catalyst for ending alien possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25631524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunJedi/pseuds/PunJedi
Summary: “Come to save me with the power of friendship, Herms?” Newton asked, head lolling back against his chair, the picture of ease.“No,” Hermann replied simply. “I’ve come to criticize you.”
Relationships: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
Comments: 16
Kudos: 108





	Catalysis

**Author's Note:**

> It's a bird, it's a plane, it's… another Uprising fix-it fic. Apparently this is the only kind of Pacific Rim fic I'm capable of finishing, which might say something worrying about me. This particular fic was inspired by [this](https://glassvines.tumblr.com/post/179026775589/sarah1281-kaijuphobic-the-mood-is-newt-coming) post, particularly the tags added by glassvines.  
> Thanks for reading! :)

“Come to save me with the power of friendship, Herms?” Newton asked, head lolling back against his chair, the picture of ease.

You know, except for the whole literally-a-prisoner thing. And the _migraine,_ and also, Hermann. What was with that guy, anyway, always standing in the corner of Newton’s cell, looking all mournful and handsome, like fucking Mr. Darcy or someone. What was his deal?

Trying to ‘save Newt’ or some bullshit, supposedly. Save Newt from _what_ , enlightenment? “Good luck with that, I guess.”

“No,” Hermann replied simply. “I’ve come to criticize you.”

“Oh,” Newton said. Surprised. “Like old times.”

(He didn’t remember ‘old times’, but it felt right to say in the moment. His headache pulsed.)

Hermann looked like he’d swallowed Kaiju viscera. “Yes. Pardon my imposition, but you are a bit of a”—he smiled, dry with wry humor—“captive audience right now.”

“Heh,” Newton replied, feeling absolutely wrong-footed. He was supposed to be—angry? Disgusted? Disdainful? This puny human man approaching him, this relic left behind by a past Newton Geiszler, saying he was going to _criticize_ him of all things. What new interrogation tactic was this, aside from a highly ineffective one? “Yeah, shoot. This has got to be better than the whole near-torture schtick they were doing before.”

For a brief moment, Hermann looked ill, before swallowing the emotion back and replacing it with good old fashioned repression. A pulse of fondness: ah, Hermann, never change.

(What?)

“Well, to begin with,” Hermann said, shuffling through a stack of papers he’d brought with him, “ten years was an awfully messy timescale to work with. I’ve done the calculations, and considering your abilities, compounded by the technological knowledge the Precursors imparted to you, you could have significantly shortened your timeline. Especially since—“

“Hey!” Newton exclaimed. “Hey, wait, hold up, did _you_ have to literally make an infallible doomsday plan up all by yourself? No? So shut up.”

Hermann’s eyebrows jumped up. “‘Infallible’ is an interesting choice of words.”

Newton tried to cross his arms; couldn’t, because of his restrains, and settled for scowling at him. “Shut up.”

“Brilliant riposte as always, Newton, the marks of an extremely advanced alien intelligence on you are pronounced.”

Newton tried a new tack and stayed silent. Unfortunately, Hermann seemed to take that as an invitation to continue on with his list of complaints about how Newt didn’t hurry along the apocalypse fast enough.

Which, yeah, he got that. He wished he could’ve brought it sooner—carved the Breach open the very first time he’d drifted with Alice. But there was a little thing called “technicalities” he’d suddenly had to deal with, now that he was more than a PPDC science monkey, and the project had ballooned into a decade-long investment.

So Hermann could suck it. What did he know—feeble-minded and single-brained, so much less than the enormity of what Newton was a part of.

“It was, quite simply, a miracle that no one found you out within the entire decade you seeded Shao Industries in preparation for the apocalypse. Statistically, the likelihood of you managing to remain undetected was—”

Newton deepened his voice, mocked, “Highly improbable, yes, yes, numbers, handwriting of God—I know about your math boner, dude, you’ve made your point. It’s irrelevant! We weren’t found out! Hell, I dangled Alice in front of you for years, and you never suspected!”

“Yes,” Hermann allowed, a look of distaste on his face, which, _hey._ Alice was a fucking marvel. “That was certainly a misjudgment on my part. My own feelings were no excuse for…”

He didn’t continue, or elaborate on what “my own feelings” meant, but Newton ruthlessly smothered the spark of curiosity that flickered up. Hermann didn’t matter.

_(Hermann… didn’t… matter.)_

(Fuck, were they making the lights brighter? Didn’t they know his head was _killing_ him? _Jesus._ Geneva Conventions, anyone?)

“—condly, the whole thing seemed a bit contrived. It reeked of those horrid monster movie plots you so enjoy wasting your not-insignificant intellect on—”

“Godzilla is a fucking classic, you pretentious dick,” Newt bit out, and then wondered why he was bothering. Defending their plan against Hermann’s censure was one thing; doing the same for a stupid human movie he’d watched years ago another.

He couldn’t spend much time pondering, though, because Hermann refused to let up. “Be that as it may, it is hardly a film to model one’s master plan off of.”

“Hey, okay, I’m not a fucking idiot,” Newton said, and _God_ Hermann was difficult, were all humans so willfully and infuriatingly obtuse? “I didn’t model our whole goddamn plan on the plot of Godzilla—in case you didn’t know, Herms, the kaiju _dies_ in that movie—“

“Which it also happened to do in real life.”

“Very fucking astute of you, but correlation doesn’t equal causation as you looooove to remind me”—and he got flashes of memories, scattershot fragments of Hermann’s pinched flat mouth and snooty voice, _correlation isn’t causation Newton don’t be so careless_ —“Godzilla has nothing at all to do with our master plan, what the hell. I spent a decade working on this and you think the best I could come up with was fucking _‘rip off a monster flick’?”_

Hermann raised an eyebrow. “Well.”

“God, _fuck_ you,” Newt seethed. “No goddamn wonder I stopped talking to you for ten years, you’re the most insufferable son-of-a-bitch alive.”

He couldn’t actually remember why he’d left Hermann, but that seemed as likely a reason as any. That, and how he kept making Newt’s headache worse with his mere sour-faced presence, like there was some fundamental part of Newt that couldn’t _help_ but react to him.

Hermann’s mouth firmed, color leeching from his lips as they compressed. “Do you have any other grossly unprofessional aspersions to cast on my character, or may I continue? As I’m sure you understand, we no longer have the sort of personal relationship where I feel comfortable engaging in petty bickering.”

Of all the imperious, misanthropic, unfeeling—

Newt sneered. “Well then, _Dr. Gottlieb,_ do carry on. How would _you_ have ended the world?”

“On the contrary, I have no desire to end the world, nor would I have approached the task in even remotely the same manner as you did. I have never shared your fascination with Kaiju, Newton.” Amusement flickered through his voice, gone as quickly as it came. “ _However,_ I would be remiss as both a scientist and your erstwhile colleague if I didn’t address the frankly glaring missteps in your attempt to bring about Armageddon.”

Like his attempt to deliver the Earth to its rightful owners was some typo-rife academic paper submitted by an apathetic undergrad. How humanity became Earth’s dominant species, Newt would never understand.

“Fine,” he drawled out, rolling his eyes. “Carry on with your totally professional bitching sesh, then. Tell me _exactly_ why my plan sucked; I’m expecting a typed copy of this, too, Times New Roman, font size twelve. On my desk by Sunday.” Not that he knew when Sunday was. He flicked his fingers, practically the only part of him that wasn’t immobilized, at Hermann. “Go on, then.”

Hermann inclined his head, replied tightly, “Thank you.”

He’d all but abandoned the papers he’d originally read from, held them tightly at his side as if he’d already memorized every perceived weak spot of Newt’s plan. Pretentious bastard, he probably had stats ready to rattle off about how Newt could have been _3.4%_ more efficient about this and _5.76 months_ faster with that, like some sort of round-eared German Spock.

But instead of producing evidence of Newt’s incompetence to the seventh decimal point, Hermann said, calm as anything:

“While your plan was certainly not devoid of flaws, there were several key errors you made in its _execution_ that I believe truly led to your failure. Although this might be a bit presumptuous of me, I would submit that leaving me alive was a critical miscalculation.”

Newton’s brain whited out for a second. Everything was cerulean and screaming fire orange, and Newt was burning burning _furious._ For full seconds, there was no room for anything else, just rage, all-encompassing, inescapable—searing through his skull and boiling his brain.

When words started making sense again, the bastard was still talking. “—gers would not have made it to Mount Fuji in time, had it not been for my work on the experimental thrusters. So, you see, you really should have finished me off then and there. Sloppy execution, Newton—”

“Oh, that’s _typical_ ,” Newt interrupted, and he was really properly incensed now—migraine burned away in the face of his flaming fucking anger. “Oh, fuck you, Hermann! Fucking _typical_. You have a problem with your own botched assassination? I nearly broke my own brain trying to _not kill you_ and you’re _bitching_ about it? You pretentious motherfucker, you, you, you chalk dust-snorting _bastard_ —”

Hermann’s lips were twitching up, and his eyes were crinkling in that way that Newt loved so much, and _fuck that guy._

“It is NOT FUNNY, _Hermann._ I almost killed you! I strangled you to near death and you have problems with my _form?_ ‘Newton, you layabout, your attempt to crush my windpipe was horridly inefficient, do do better next time.’” Even his shitty impression didn’t seem to crack Hermann’s stiff-upper-lipped exterior like it once would have, and he all but screeched out, “Well, fuck you very much!”

He craned his neck out, baring it to Hermann. “Here, you can fucking _demonstrate_ how I should have killed you, see how you like it, you insensitive condescending jackass.”

That did it: Hermann went wooden, all that strange softness leeched out of him. “That is _not_ a joking matter, Newton.”

“Oh, so _my_ death isn’t funny, but yours is prime for academic review? Double fucking standards, asshole, that’s not very scientific of you. Take your ‘sloppy execution’ and shove it up your ass, if there’s any room with that massive stick in there—”

“I can hardly believe I missed you that long decade,” Hermann retorted. “I must have unconsciously repressed memories of your personality.” His mouth was a thin white line and Newt hated hated adored him—

“Yeah, well, I missed you too, you fucker,” Newt spat back, “you’re not special.”

“If I am ‘not special’,” Hermann replied, “you should hardly have such a problem discussing my near death. Even after—”

“That wasn’t what I meant and you know it—“

“— _even after_ Dr. Shao came out with the gun, you could have reacted more quickly. It was shoddily done of you, Newton—“

“Oh, _oh,_ so we’re talking about the gun now? Well how about your fun little stunt with your cane? _Your_ save-the-world plan would have gone _much_ smoother if you’d just let her fucking shoot me, you hypocritical—”

“Ah, but the world _was_ saved, so we don’t need to discuss the merits of _my_ plan—“

“Plan my ass, you weren’t thinking when you tripped Liwen—”

“How could I, my brain had been thoroughly deprived of oxygen—”

“But not thoroughly enough for you, apparently—”

“You are _impossible,_ Newton Geiszler,” Hermann shouted, red in the face—and then he beamed, brighter than the stabbing fluorescent lights above them, brighter than Kaiju blood. “But you are _entirely_ yourself.”

“Yeah, well, _you’re_ —” Newt started to yell, the momentum of the fight carrying him forward before Hermann’s words caught up to him, tripping him, sending him sprawling. “You’re—holy shit.”

Like a precipitation reaction, an insoluble solid forming out of an aqueous solution—suddenly there was a distinction between _him_ and _them_ that hadn’t existed before, a whole phase of matter separating them, rendering them disparate. They weren’t _gone_ but they were _detached_ , a foreign entity, an unwelcome incursion.

Newt could sense the jagged lines where their consciousnesses no longer meshed, the divide between their rage and his shame, the divide between their hunger and his pain. The chasm between them gaped open, and Newt gaped at it in turn, shocked.

He hadn’t ever thought he’d get his identity back. He hadn’t been himself to even want it.

Newt blinked, hard—against the tears, against the fear that this was a trick, a hallucination—and came back to the world, a little bit. For the first time in ten years, he was seeing through his own eyes.

Newt saw Hermann standing there, and instead of that strange vague confusion, that simmering revulsion—he felt relief. Residual irritation. Gratitude. Affection.

He saw the faded yellow bruises pressed into Hermann’s neck, and the guilt that sledgehammered into him was more than proof enough of his own cognizance.

“I’m so sorry, Hermann,” he babbled, talking talking talking, as much as he could before they came back and stole his voice and his mind and his sense of self again. “Fuck, Hermann, _fuck_ —I nearly killed you, I—I nearly killed everyone, I _did_ kill people, _God_ —”

“It was not you, Newt,” Hermann said, voice insistent—unwavering. Newt stared up at him, the vision of him blurred and bright and beautiful through his tears. “Much like their plan was not yours. I know you, Newton Geiszler, and if you had truly wanted to destroy the world, you would’ve done in it a week, accompanied by a doubtlessly tasteless pyrotechnics display, and a truly godawful selection of your rock-and-roll.”

Newt had a whole host of things he wanted to say, needed to say, felt he had to say lest he forgot for a moment that he was in all technicality a mass murderer. Instead, he rasped, “Five days.”

Hermann tilted his head a bit to the side; his mouth tipped up in a smile. “Six, perhaps.”

“O ye of little faith,” Newt quipped. He grinned, for the first time in a decade, of entirely his own volition. God, horrific guilt notwithstanding, it felt _good_ to be back. “I could’ve totally done it in five, dude. Maybe four and a half.”

“Come now, Newton,” Hermann said, “that’s just implausible.”

Newt was sitting there, a recently liberated prisoner from his cage of ten years, in front of the man who had saved him from a malevolent alien hivemind with an _argument_. The man who had _criticized_ omnipotent extraterrestrial colonizers out of his head. The man who Newt happened to love like life itself—because suddenly, life was bright and bold and worth living.

Yeah. Implausible. That was one word for it.

He started laughing. It was shaking, scratchy, and _human._ Hermann joined in.

…

“It was pretty smart, you know,” Newt said, apropos of nothing. He was elbow-deep in Mega-Kaiju, because even seven months after the whole apocalypse debacle, there were still viable specimens of the thing—did Newt know how to make a monster or _what_ —and Hermann shared a lab with him, and everything was as it was supposed to be. “What you did to knock me back to myself. I didn’t even notice until you’d succeeded.”

Hermann was turned away, facing his chalkboards, but Newt could hear the smile coloring his voice. “Even those of us without six PhDs have a clever idea every once and awhile.”

“One-sixth of a clever idea,” Newt argued. Never mind he’d just complimented the man, he wasn’t going to be the reason that Hermann Gottlieb got a big head. Sure, Newt had almost ended the world, but letting Hermann become full of himself really _would_ be an unpardonable crime. “You can have one-sixth of a clever idea. Hey, that’s a whole sixth more than most of the population gets, you should feel proud.”

Hermann’s voice would make the Sahara look damp. “How generous of you, Dr. Geiszler.”

“You forgot five ’Doctor’s, Herms.”

“And _you_ forgot mine.”

“Sorry, _Doctor_ Herms. My mistake.” He made one final incision with a flourish, and then shucked his gloves and apron off. He walked over to Hermann, who was complaining about Newt’s lack of decorum and pathological aversion to showing basic respect—or at least, he _had been_ , before Newt slid both arms around his waist, latching on and resting his head against Hermann’s back.

“You are like a Kaiju skin mite,” Hermann grumbled. He was still holding his chalk, though he had ceased writing. Victory to Newt.

He pressed a kiss into the back of Hermann’s neck. “Fascinating and rare?”

“A pest,” Hermann retorted, and _ouch,_ okay, that stung. Newt drew back, hands lingering at Hermann’s hips, and frowned at that smooth, milk-pale neck. It was too bad the man attached to such a nice neck was an uninspired asshole.

“Those skin mites are fucking _incredible_ , dude, okay, they’re the first non-genetically-engineered extraterrestrial lifeform that we ever encountered, and they deserve your respect as such. I mean, can you _imagine_ , a species that evolved specifically to survive off of Kaiju? Every part of them is toxic, but not to the mites, I mean, come _on_ , how metal can you fucking _get_ —”

Hermann turned around and leaned forward, pressing their foreheads together. His free hand—chalk having disappeared—reached up to hook around Newt’s neck, a warm weight, a welcome pressure.

“I suppose they are rather incredible,” Hermann said. He was smiling, wide lips quirked up at the edges.

Newt blinked, then hazarded, “…we’re not talking about the mites anymore, right?”

Hermann huffed like Newt was the stupidest man on the planet, and then kissed him like he was the only man on it. Not all of their arguments could end with the expulsion of an extraterrestrial hivemind, after all. Those were in short supply these days.

Newt smiled against Hermann’s mouth. That was fine. He liked _this_ ending even better.


End file.
